


Darkness

by of_raven_wings



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Rape, Sexual Assault, look after yourselves, seriously this is triggery, tasertricks - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-02
Updated: 2014-03-02
Packaged: 2018-01-14 06:53:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1256959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/of_raven_wings/pseuds/of_raven_wings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This grew out of a prompt from an anon on Tumblr who wanted some tasertricks hurt/comfort.  </p><p>This is also triggery as hell, with detailed description of assault/rape up front.  Take care of yourself if you choose to read this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Darkness

In her mind, Darcy is running.

If she focuses, she can almost, _almost_ , feel it.  The burning of the muscles in her legs, the stretching and flexing of tendons, the creak of joints.  Her breath coming hard, her heart beating a tattoo behind her ribs.

She is running.  She is _fleeing_.  She is going to get away, she is going to be safe-

A hand comes down on her mouth, rough callouses pressing against her lips.  The hand presses harder, and she feels her teeth slice into her lip, her own blood salt sharp on her tongue.  She had closed her eyes so she couldn’t see him, but in the darkness, it feels almost worse, all of other senses more vivid.  She can feel every thread of the crumpled sheet beneath her, is mired in the fug of his cologne.  At the beginning of the evening, she had thought it a subtle scent; now it is a sour reek that burns like acid in her lungs.

If she opens her eyes, she knows that these sensations will become softer, easier.  But if she opens her eyes, she will see him.

Darcy squeezes her eyes shut harder.

She is an idiot.  Nick had said that it was going to be fun.  He had said that she had moped around long enough, that she deserved a night off.  It had seemed like a good idea.  Nick was a friend of a friend, and, she was assured, a good guy.  A nice guy.  He’d promised her dinner, maybe some dancing or a movie.  Whatever she felt like, wherever the night took them.  _Fun_.

And he was right.  She _had_ moped around for long enough.  Months now, and nothing had changed.  Would never change.  It was only one night that Nick was asking for, and maybe it would lead to more nights, and maybe it wouldn’t.  It was a beginning, at least, and she could stop thinking about-

Nick’s other hand curls around her throat, yanks Darcy from her thoughts, brings her back to her body.  His fingers press against the place where her pulse beat against her skin.  One of his nails was torn, the edge feeling almost sharp, like a blade.  It scrapes against her skin as he shifts his grip slightly, pushes down.  Stars begin to dance behind Darcy’s eyes, but she can still breathe.  Just.

Something cold curls tight inside Darcy.  He knows _exactly_ what he is doing.  Knows the right pressure to use, knows where to press.

The hand on her mouth falls away.  She does not scream.  That coldness inside her tells her not to, even as she feels the ropes snake around her wrist.  He pulls them tight, ties them in a complicated knot.  Against her skin, the rope feels like sandpaper, and her hands begin to numb immediately.

Darcy turns her head away.

A memory surfaces.  In eighth grade, she’d had a crush on a boy called Geoff Buchman.  Tall, with wavy brown hair that had spun to gold in the sunlight.  He’d always worn a thin gold chain tucked beneath the collar of his shirt, the metal tarnished with age.

Of course, Geoff Buchman had never noticed Darcy Lewis.  Until the day when he somehow, miraculously, asked her to a dance.  Everything had been perfect.  A royal blue dress with a skirt that swirled and begged to be danced in.  Sapphire earrings borrowed from her aunt.  Her first real lipstick, a delicate shade of shell pink.  The colour of a promise.

Geoff had danced with her for almost the entirety of a song before he’d led Darcy away from the gymnasium.  The hallways were shadowed, and Darcy remembered how her giggles had echoed from wall to wall.  Geoff had “acquired” a key to the music room, and as he had unlocked the door, something had fizzed up inside Darcy.  This was going to be fun.

Later on, if someone had asked her, she would have said it was nothing.  A stupid prank by a boy who, she discovered many years later, had been thrown around the locker room by a couple of senior boys on a semi-regular basis.  All he’d really done was kiss her - her _first_ kiss - and she’d been so dazed that she had barely noticed his hands working at the bodice of her dress.

Something cold moved against her skin.  Looking down, she saw the gleam of scissors as Geoff slid them back into his pocket. 

The lights flicked on at the same time that Geoff pulled her ruined bra away.  And then she’d seen the others, the ones who had been waiting, hidden in the room.

The whispers and laughs ran around and around the room, tightened like rope against her skin.  They held her fast, and she couldn’t move, couldn’t do anything.

“… _she asked for it…look at her…slut…she came here with him…he should have kept going…maybe we should…maybe you should…asked for it…”_

The hand around her throat tightens again, and the memory falls away.  Everything but those voices, which keep whispering and whispering.  She had drunk the wine Nick had kept pouring into her glass during dinner, and she had come willingly to his apartment.  She hadn’t said no when he had slid across the couch, when he had kissed her.

Everything had gone away for a while, then.  There was a vague memory of the shape of her taser pressed against her palm, of trying some of the moves that she had learned in the dozens of self defence courses she had attended over the years.  It hadn’t been enough.

And then the bed, and the ropes.

There was nothing she could do now. 

Nick’s hands move, that sharpened fingernail tearing a furrow along the line of her collarbone.  It stings, bright and sharp.  Now that she’s aware of her body again, she feels those stinging pains in other places, too.  As though he has traced designs in blood on her belly, her thighs, her breasts.  There’s a dull ache in her side, a griping pain in her lower back.  Her hands are completely numb.

Darcy tries to think of anything but the hands moving on her body, systematically shredding her dress.  Cobalt blue, with a plunging neckline, and a shirt that swished around her knees, perfect for dancing.

Deliberately not green, deliberately not black.

And that thought is enough for her mind to go to the place where she does not want it to go.  The place where she had been trying for months to avoid.  Loki.

It has been over a year since he arrived at SHIELD.  Some kind of deal had been made with Asgard, and they were all assured that he was a good guy now.  At first, when she’d caught glimpses of him, she had felt the same unease that everyone else did.  That unease had soon slid into something like fascination, and she had found herself making excuses to be in the same places as him.  After a while, she had realised that he was making excuses to be in the same place as her.

Watching Jane and Thor, both of them so happy,  she had actually allowed herself to believe for a while that she and Loki could be happy, too.  That she could be the person who broke through his walls, that she could mean something to him.  

There had been nights that were and were not dates, leading to nights that most definitely _were_.  He would spend the night at her apartment, and she would always go to sleep while he was still awake.  In the morning, when she woke, he was always gone.  He never invited her to his apartment.

Slowly, Darcy realised that he was gone more than he was there.  That he was excuses _not_ to be in the same place at him.

She could take a hint.  She wasn’t going to wait around for him.  _Darcy Lewis_ didn’t wait for anyone, even an Asgardian prince.  And so she didn’t.

It had been two months, two weeks and three days since she and Loki had even spoken.  Not that she was counting.

And so when Nick had asked her out, he had figured that two months, two weeks and three days were long enough not to wait for someone.  And so she had said yes.

Pain flares again; she doesn’t focus on where.  By this stage, pretty much everything hurts, anyway.  There’s a hiss of rope uncurling, and then it is wrapped around and around her throat.  The rope feels worn to threads in places, sheared smooth in others.  Again, the pressure is hard enough to bring stars, but not hard enough to cut off her breathing entirely.  Yet.

The knowledge that this is even worse than she thought, that she is probably going to die, is a thing that is far away.  As, blessedly, is the weight that is upon her, and the pain.

And then, suddenly, that weight lifts away.

Fingers fumble at the rope around her neck, but the knot only tightens more, cutting off her breath and blood entirely.  A chill moves against her skin, and then the rope is unweaving to threads, fingers pressing lightly against her pulse.

And she knows that touch, though she’s never felt Loki’s fingers tremble the way they are now.

It takes an enormous effort to open her eyes.  Everything is blurred, Loki’s face a smear of light and shadow.  Something flickers behind him and is gone.

“Darcy!”

She thinks Loki is shouting, but his voice sound far away, and receding fast.

And then there is nothing.

 

 

#

 

She wakes to blessed darkness.

Her body feels a long way away, her skin numb.  She’s lying on a bed, propped up on a pile of cushions, but that’s all she can tell.  She has never know anything this dark.  Always in the city, there is light bleeding in from outside.  Even in the still of night, there is always light.  And even if youconcreted up the windows, there would always be the dozens of LEDs scattered around the room.  

Even in a blackout, there was always the compulsion to create light.  Never to be in total darkness.

And now, lying here, she knows why.  The light is a distraction.  You could always lose yourself in it, forget about anything you wanted to.  Here, in the darkness, she cannot help but remember everything.  Nick and his _fun_.  The ropes.  Loki.

 _Loki_.

There’s a soft sound, as if of silk sliding against silk, and Darcy stiffens, her heart thudding.  She wants to ask if there is someone there.  She doesn’t want to ask.  It could be anyone.  It could be no one.

She hears herself make a small, panicked sound.

“You’re safe, Darcy.”  Loki’s voice, though she cannot quite figure out where he is.  “He cannot hurt you any more.”

A part of her wonders if she should be _more_ afraid, locked wherever-the-hell-this-is with Loki.  She shifts her weight and pain tightens around her neck like a noose.  There is a thick line there where the rope abraded her skin; she smells copper as she slides her fingers along her skin.

“I don’t think I was the first,” she says.  “Those ropes, I think they were used.”

A hiss of breath, so faint she thinks she might have imagined it.  “Were you…willing?”

“Willing for what?”  Darcy sits up, ignores the sharp stab of pain as she opens the wounds around her throat.  “You think I’d just hand myself over for that?  For rape?  Murder?”

Loki says nothing.

“Why do you even care, anyway?”  Blood is flowing from the rope wounds now; she feels it trickling into the hollow of her throat.  “We’re just Midgardians, right?  We don’t mean anything to the _gods_.  Why didn’t you just leave me there?”  She flops down onto her side.  Hopes that she’s presenting him with her back, since she still can’t tell where he is.  The abraded skin at her throat and wrists is throbbing now in time to her rapid heartbeat.  “Just call Jane or Natasha, okay?  Hell, call Stark.  I don’t care.  Just stop with whatever this is.”

“I thought-“

His voice is clearly behind her now.  Sitting on a chair next to the bed, perhaps.  For the first time, she wonders if this is his bedroom.  If this is his home.  “You thought _what_?  You’ve made it abundantly clear what you think of me by fucking me then ignoring me for months.  And now, what?  You expect thanks for sailing in from god knows where and _saving_ me?  You should have just left me there.  That’s all I’m worth, right?  Just another dead girl that people will pretend to mourn for all of five minutes before wondering what’s on television.”  She can’t hold back the stream of words, just as she can’t hold back the hot tears that are welling in her eyes.  “You know, a lot of time I think I agree with you.  We’re not really worth saving, are we?  Maybe you should just finish what he started.  It’s kind of in your nature, isn’t it?”

Silence.  Not even the sound of him breathing.

“Look, just call me a cab,” she says.  “Call Jane.  Call anyone.  Just let me go home and forget that any of this happened.  And you can go back to being whatever the hell it is these days.”

“Do you think you could forget?”  His voice is so quiet that she she had to strain to hear it.  “Do you believe that is possible?”

“I’ve had long practice at forgetting.  Believe me, I can manage.  Enough wine, and I can forget anything.”

She realises what she said, and sourness rushes up in her throat.  Loki is there with a basin immediately, presses a cool cloth to her forehead when she is done.  It does little to ease the headache that’s beginning to grind into her skull, but it’s something, at least.  She pulls it down over her eyes, curls up on the bed again.  The mattress sinks a little as he sits down on the other side of the bed.

“Just get me a taxi, okay?”  Darcy’s voice sounds smaller than she wants.  “I just want to start being over yet another episode of Darcy Lewis’s astounding stupidity already.”

“He drugged the wine, Darcy,” Loki says.  “He planned everything.  There were…weapons, instruments.”

“So I’m even stupider this time, then?”  Darcy pushes the cloth from her eyes.  She doesn’t deserve even that small soothing touch.  “Great.”

She feels the air shift, and she knows that Loki is reaching out to her.  Curls up tight inside to brace herself for his touch.  It never comes.

“You would have been his seventh.” Loki’s voice is quiet, constrained.

“Does that win me a medal or something?”  Darcy swings her legs over the side of the bed.  Her head spins, and she presses her feet against the cool stone of the floor, focuses until the world stills a little.  “I’m only the seventh stupidest woman in the city?”  She pushes her hair back from her face, wincing as her fingers catch in tangles.  There’s the scent of blood again, and her stomach twists as she realises that it’s clotted in her hair.  “Look, as fun as this probably is for you, I just want to be home.  I just want to make a cup of tea, eat some chocolate and watch something stupid on TV.  I’ll damn well walk if I have to.”  

She stands up.  Her legs shake, and she has to lock her knees to stop herself from standing, but she _damn well stands_.

“Please.”

Darcy looks back over her shoulder.  She can still see nothing through the darkness.  Impossible to tell what expression he wears.  “What?”

“Please stay.”  The sound of him shifting his weight on the bed.  Lying down, maybe.  “The darkness, it makes it easier.  If you go out into the light, into the world, too soon, it feels like everything is shattering.”

“ _God_ , what have you been watching, fucking Oprah or something?  I’m not fucking made of glass, I’m not going to-“  Darcy breaks off.  He’s too still, the air around him too thick, somehow.  “How do you…why do you know that?”

This time she knows the exact expression he’s wearing.  It’s that thin mask of a smile, a mask he dons too easily and too frequently.  “It was…a long time ago.  Not like this, but enough alike to know that the darkness makes things easier.”

Darcy takes a breath, lets it out.  “Is this your apartment?”

“The familiarity of this space makes this kind of illusion simpler to hold.  I could take you to your apartment, but it would make maintaining this illusion as well as other magic more difficult.”

“Other magic?  What are you planning on conjuring?”

The air shifts as he holds out his hand.  “Not conjuring.  Healing.”   He moves his fingers close enough to the abrasions on her neck that she fancies she can feel his pulse shifting the air back and forth between them.  “May I?”

Darcy sits down again.  Loki’s hand moves as she does, hovering at the same distance from her skin without ever touching her.

“It beats Band-Aids, I guess,” she says.

His touch is cool against her skin, something like electricity fizzing beneath her skin as the abrasions heal.  Loki’s fingers are gentle as he moves over her throat, her wrists.  His hand moves to her cheekbone; he presses his fingers harder against her skin, and there’s a sharp crack.

“What the fuck?”  Darcy moves her hand to her cheek so fast that she captures Loki’s fingers beneath hers.  His hand is shaking.  “Was my _face_ broken?”

“Your cheekbone was fractured in four places.”  He slides his hand away.  “Do you wish a complete inventory of your injuries?”

“I…no, I can live without that.”  Darcy returns her hand to her lap.  Suddenly she’s aware of too many aches, too much pain.  “Shouldn’t I have felt that?  I mean, you just snapped my bones back together.”

“Other magic, remember?”

“Neat trick.”  

Loki’s hands move over her, each touch bringing that electric crawl beneath her skin.  There are more snaps as he heals bone.  She counts at least three ribs, and something in her spine.  The last, even though she doesn’t feel it, makes her stomach roil.  He presses his hand to her stomach, and she feels cold coil and uncoil within her.

The cold fades, is replaces by a soft warmth.  A not entirely unpleasant sensation.

“I can’t remember,” Darcy says.  “Is there…did he?”

Loki’s hand falls away.  “He did not.”

Darcy releases a shaky breath.  “Well, I guess I don’t even guess I get to call in sick now.  Damn.”  She tries to laugh, but the sound catches in her throat, becomes something more like a sob.  “And what about him?  He just gets to walk away from this, find someone else to hurt?”

“He will hurt no one else.”

Darcy stares into the darkness.  “You…?”

“There will be no more.  I made certain of it.”

The mattress shifts as Loki stands.  By the sound of the fabric shifting around him, he’s wearing Midgardian clothing.  Probably jeans and a loose linen shirt.  He’d always favoured that kind of outfit in the time they’d been together.  The first time she had seen him so casually dressed, her heart had done a backflip.  She had always assumed before that it was the leather and armour that made him so damn intimidating, so _there_ , but it was all just him.

The first time he’s walked barefoot around her apartment, his shirt unbuttoned and billowing around him as he poked through her books, then she had thought that her heart was doing a full acrobatics show.

“You should rest,” Loki says.  “The darkness will help you to sleep.”

He takes a step away from the bed, and she can tell that he’s barefoot.  And she can’t help herself from saying: “I don’t want to be alone.”  Her voice is small and pleading, and she can’t even find any anger at herself for needing him to be there.

“Darcy, I-“

“I’m not asking you for anything more.  I just don’t want to be alone.  Please?  Just stay with me?”

He says nothing for so long that she fears that he’s teleported away, but then she feels his weight settle back onto the bed.  He lies down as far away from her as possible.  She’s not sure if she wants him to move closer, not sure if she should be asking him to leave.

She says nothing, asks nothing.  Just lies back and closes her eyes, curls her body as tight as she can.  Listens to the steady sound of his breathing.

 

#

 

When Darcy wakes again, it is still dark.

This is only the second thing she notices.  The first thing is that Loki is lying behind her, his long body curved around hers.  One arm is curled around her waist, his hand pressed against her stomach.  She can feel that warm energy moving within her, coiling and uncoiling in rhythm with Loki’s breath on the back of her neck.  He is so close that his lips almost touch her skin, his breathing the deep even tide of sleep.

She knows that she should pull away.  But even when they were together - as together as they were - he had never fallen asleep next to her, had never held her like this.  He had always worn a mask, always hidden himself from her.  

Darcy closes her eyes, counts to ten.  Breathes in the scent of him, the strange mixture of ice and musk.  Tears sting at the corners of her eyes.  She wants to just stay here, like this.  Knows that it would be as much of a pretence as any mask that Loki has ever worn.

She moves away.  Loki murmurs in his sleep, his arm tightening against her, pulling her back against his body.  That energy moves within her again; as it does, his skin warms, too.  She can feel his hardness pressing against her thigh.

His lips press against her shoulder at the same time that he wakes.

His whole body stiffens, that energy dissipating, leaving only cold in its wake.  And Darcy wants to cry, and she knows she should just let him pull away.  Let him go back to hiding behind his masks.

She turns over, grabs his wrist as he’s pulling away.

“Why do you keep doing this?” she asks.  “Why save me, why do all of this with the darkness and the healing, and just run away again?”

“I do not _run away_ ,” Loki says.  His voice is rough, but he lets her hold his wrist.  “I merely refuse to stay where I am not wanted or needed.”

“And how do you even know if you’re wanted?  If you’re _needed_?”  Darcy’s voice breaks on the last word.  “Why did you even…why even talk to me in the first place? Why?”

Loki twists his hand around.  One long finger strokes along her palm, tracing her life line.  “I saw how happy my _brother_ was with Jane Foster.  And I…I was foolish.”  He pulled away.  “I am sorry, Darcy Lewis.  I did not intend for you to be hurt.”

He takes his hand from hers, moves to the other side of the bed, but he doesn’t leave.

“Why stop, then?  Thor and Jane are still happy.”

“Yes, they are.”  She hears him run his hands through his hair.

“Then what…don’t you think you’re allowed to be happy too?”  Darcy runs her thumb down the place where he touched her, follows the line of her own life line.  In the darkness, it feels pitted, broken in a dozen places.  “Or is it…is it just me?  Do you just not want me?”

“No!”  Loki’s knuckles crack, and she knows that he’s twisting his fingers together.  “Thor has petitioned Odin for Jane Foster to become Aesir.  Likely they will live out long, _happy_ lives together.”

“So you just want to make yourself suffer, then?”

She hears his weight shifting on the bed.  She still can’t see him, but she knows that he’s pulled his knees up to his chest.  And even that posture is so unlike the mask that he always wears that it breaks her heart.

Loki is silent for a long time.  “There are no avenues for a _Frost Giant_ to petition to Allfather for anything.”  His breath hisses in, out.  “I would have to watch you die.”

The darkness flickers, and for an instant Darcy can see him.  He’s wearing worn jeans, a black shirt crookedly buttoned.  His feet are bare, his fingers twined so tightly together that his knuckles are white.

“ _That’s_ why you’re being a dick?” Darcy asks.  “Because in, like, sixty years or something I’m going to bite it?”

“I do not wish to-“

“Oh, fuck you.  Just, fuck you.”  

Darcy launches herself across the bed.  Loki is so surprised that he releases his hold on his knees, allows her to slide into his lap.  The darkness flickers again, and she sees his wide eyes, dilated pupils.

“You couldn’t have actually spoken to me about any of this?” she asks.  “People do that, you know.  I suspect even Asgardians do, sometimes.  People die, Loki.  People get sick, people get hit by buses.  Hell, I’m sure someone’s even been crushed by a falling piano Bugs Bunny style.  For all you know, a piano might fall on _you_ tomorrow, and you don’t see me running away.”

Loki’s hands have come to rest on her waist, his fingers curled lightly against her.  “Piano?  I do not understand.”

“Look, just forget about all of that.  Seriously.  So what if I die before you?  So what if something is going to suck a few years down the track?  Does that mean that you just walk away from that thing, even if it could make you deliriously happy for those few years?”

“It is different for Aesir-“

“Which, as you have taken pains to tell everyone, you are _not_.  How do you know that you’re going to live as long as Thor, anyway?  You’re a Frost Giant who uses magic constantly to look like something else?  How do you know that’s not going to cut your life span?”  Darcy pokes him in the chest.  Hard.  “The answer is that you don’t.  No one knows what their future is going to be.  That’s why you make the most of today.”

Loki’s fingers press harder against her waist, begin to slide away.  Darcy grabs his wrists, moves them back to her waist.

“Forget about everything,” she says.  “Right now, right here, do you want to be with me?”

Loki takes a breath.

“Don’t think,” Darcy says, knowing that he’s going to vacillate, going to bury himself beneath words and masks and excuses.  She leans down so she’s face to face with him, his breath moving against her lips.  “Lift the darkness, just enough so you can see me, and answer me without thinking.  Do you want to be with me?  Right now?”

His fingers clutch at her waist, and the darkness ebbs away.  There’s a pale kind of light emanating from everywhere and nowhere, like moonlight spilling through ice.

Loki’s eyes meet hers, his pupils wide and dark.  “Yes.”

“Then that’s all the damn answer I need.”

Darcy leans in to press her lips against his, but his hands tighten at her waist, hold her back.  “We should not.  You have experienced trauma.”

“And you healed me, remember.”  Darcy shifts her weight, her thighs straddling his hips.  “Besides, it’s always the best thing, getting back on the horse, right?”

Loki’s eyes narrow.  “Is that a horse joke?”

Darcy can’t suppress the giggle that rises within her.  It had been a bit of a thing around SHIELD after Loki arrived.  Someone - not her, of course not - had read some Norse mythology and had taken to leaving photos of horses in strategic places around the office.  It wasn’t her fault that things had escalated, culminating in a particularly stunning work of art in the form of a horse-shaped cake delivered to the office for Loki.  Said horse dressed in sugar lingerie, emerald of course.

Loki presses his lips together.

Darcy grins, then grinds down on him.  Despite the look on his face, Loki is hard, and as she moves, he makes a stifled groan, his fingers clutching convulsively at her.

“Are you certain, Darcy Lewis?” he asks.  His tone is formal, for all that their position is anything but.

“What do you think?”

Darcy leans down to kiss him, but he moves a hand to her cheek, pausing her a breath away from him.  His eyes search her face.

“You must tell me,” he says.  “I would not injure you.”

Darcy stares into his eyes, and there is so much naked _need_ in their depths that she feels tears prick at the corners of her own eyes.  She has _never_ seen him this vulnerable, never seen him stripped of all of his masks, all his facades and trickery.

“I am certain,” she whispers.  “I have never been more certain of anything.”

He is the one who moves then, rising up to capture his mouth.  His lips are gentle at first, but quickly the kiss becomes something almost desperate, his lips sliding against hers, his tongue delving into her mouth and dancing with hers.  His hands close around her waist, thumbs brushing slow circles against her stomach.  That warm energy begins to move within her again, and she cannot help but rock her hips against him.  He makes that strangled sound, and, in one devastatingly graceful movement, he flips her over so she is on her back, his body pressed against hers.

Loki props himself up on one arm, slides his free hand down the curve of her breast, her waist, her hip, until he reaches the hem of her dress.  “You wore this…for him?”

“I bought it for you,” she says, unable to focus on anything but his fingers sliding over the hem of her dress, the silk growing warm beneath his touch.  “It’s the same green that you like to wear.”

“I noticed.”  His hand fists in the silk.  “I do not like that you wore it for one such as he.”

“So what, I should keep the pretty stuff only for you?”  Darcy tries for a teasing tone, fails.

“Everything.”  Loki’s fingers tighten, and she hears stitches pop and tear.  “ _Everything_ of you, for me.  And only for me.”

Darcy looks up at him, his pale skin rendered marble-like in the paler light, the dark shadows of his eyes and hair.  “Tear it,” she whispers.  “Rip it to threads.  Burn it, freeze it.  _Unmake it_.”

His throat convulses as he swallows.  He nods slightly, and then his fingers tighten again in the fabric, twist.  Darcy closes her eyes as heat and cold run over her skin.  There’s a faint smell of smoke, and then Loki’s hand relaxes.  He presses his palm against her thigh, and his skin is cool.

“It is done.”  He presses a kiss gently against one of her eyelids, then the other.  His hand slides up to her waist, and she realises that not only has he unmade the dress, he’s also left her naked.

Darcy cracks an eye.  “Nice trick.”

He grins, and she feels something open inside her, seeing that heartbreaking smile of his.  There is so much of him that is like a child still, a child looking for approval.

She opens her other eye.  “I notice that you’re still dressed.”

His eyes widen, mock surprised.  “Really?”

She slides her hand down to his shirt, slips a button free.  Another, then another, until she can press her hand against his chest.  His heart is beating as fast as hers.  Faster, maybe.  She moves her hand down across his abdomen, tracing the lines of his muscles, and _damn_ but she’s missed touching him.  She keeps moving down, until her fingertips are brushing the waist of his jeans.  Loki draws in a sharp breath, makes another one of those strangled moans as she dips her fingers just barely inside the waistband, brushes her nails across wiry curls.

His mouth comes down on hers at the same time he presses his body against her.  He traps her hand between them in the process, and Darcy smiles against his lips, moves her fingers down until she is touching him.  With her hand confined, she can do little more than press her fingers against the hardness of him, but it is enough to make him gasp, for his breath to shudder from him.  He mutters something, his fingers moving against the sheets, and then his clothes are gone, and he is naked against her.

Darcy squeezes the length of him lightly, then moves her hand across the sharp planes of his hips, across the taut curve of his buttocks.  Pulls him to her as close as she can, curls her arms and legs around him.  There is dampness on her cheeks, and she’s not certain if they’re his tears or hers.  Maybe they’re both.

Loki kisses her deeply, then pulls back to kneel between her thighs, looking down at her.  Darcy’s instinct is, as always, to cover herself.  She knows that her body is too soft: belly too rounded, thighs too heavy.  

Loki grasps her hands lightly, presses a kiss into each of her palms.  “You are beautiful, Darcy.”

“Tell that to my mother, will you?”

“Gladly.”  He smiles, twines his fingers with hers.  She can feel his pulse beneath his skin.  “Just as gladly as I will show you.”

He keeps his fingers laced with hers as he leans forward, kisses the side of her neck, moves to the place where her own pulse beats beneath her skin.  His teeth nip lightly there, and she gasps, her hips rocking up, seeking.  Loki chuckles, nips again, unlaces one hand and skims it down her body.  Her hips rock up again, but he doesn’t touch her, just slides his fingers over her skin, just barely touching her.  That warm energy moves within her as his hand moves, curling tight until she’s having to bite her lip to stifle her own moans.

In the dim light, it seems as though his touch defines her body.  She can almost see emerald light flickering around his fingers as he traces the curve of her hips, the length of her thigh.  It glows too, where his mouth touches, traces her collarbone and ribs and breasts.

He sucks her nipple into his mouth, pulls lightly with his teeth.  He uses an odd, stuttering rhythm, his hand moving up to trace circles around her other nipple.  It feels as though he is making music of her, composing a symphony of light and touch that has her writhing against the sheets.

Then his lips are moving down over her stomach, his hands stroking circles against her skin.  When he settles between her thighs, he looks up at her and grins.  Eyes on hers, he blows against her, his breath cool.  Slides a finger inside, making a small, satisfied noise when he finds her wet and ready.  His movements are almost lazy as he adds another finger, then another, and Darcy knows if he would just move _faster_ she would come in an instant.

Loki grins again.  Keeps his eyes on hers still as he lowers his mouth to her, curls his fingers back and licks once, _hard_ , against her clit.

That single touch is all it takes, and Darcy shatters into a thousand pieces.

When she comes back to reality, Loki has moved, is stretched out beside her.   His eyes are heavily lidded, and for a moment she thinks that he came, too.  Then she turns over, and her thigh brushes against him, still hard.  She shifts herself to she’s lying on her side, reaches down to guide him into her.

“You don’t have to,” Loki says.

Darcy’s answer is to sink down on him.  Her climax has left her so wet that he sinks all the way in, fills her completely.  She moves her hand to his hip.  Doesn’t move, just focuses on the feel of him inside her.

“I know,” she says.  “I want to.”

His lips brush against hers in a gentle, almost chaste kiss.  She can taste herself on his tongue, a surprisingly erotic sensation, and she begins moving without thought, rocking against him.  

At first, Loki lets her set the pace, but soon he is thrusting harder into her, soft moans escaping from him at the apex of each thrust.  She clutches at his hip, trying to somehow pull him even deeper inside her.  She wants to drown in him, and she wants him to drown in her.  Wants to be lost, and found again.

And then she is coming again, waves of pleasure so sharp that she can almost see them in the darkness in her eyes.  Loki buries his face into her neck, his hips moving in an uneven rhythm before he thrusts hard into her, and holds there.  He moans against her skin, his voice vibrating through her bones, spiralling through her until she comes yet again, curling her body around him.

She’s half asleep when she feels him withdraw, pull a sheet up over them both.  He wraps his arms around her, fitting his body into the negative space around her.

“And yes, this is my apartment,” he says, kissing her gently on the forehead.  “I’ll show you it properly in the morning.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
